For those of you who don't know, I'll elaborate. I've always had a thing about cooking. Okay, 'always' may be a bit too strong. I wasn't a toddler dreaming of broiling and baking, measuring and tasting. I have, over the years, developed a taste for it.
For over a decade, I've imagined having a fabulous kitchen that I can almost visualize. I'm not even sure why that was, as I'd not really spent a lot of time in the kitchen before that, except for at work. Regardless, I picked up my first cookbook in the winter of 1995. I made my first forays into cooking in my ex-fiance's sister's kitchen in Connecticut. Months later, when I was in the Air Force, I spent a lot of time in both fire stations, trying different recipes from that cookbook and other sources. Occasionally I would experiment. I cooked for myself and the guys enough that upon my dismissal from that esteemed organization, my friend Chad Aldridge (shout out to Mr. Aldridge, where ever you may be) pushed for me to try to go to culinary school to learn to be a chef.
I didn't. Instead, I ended up working in the security industry (within the hospitality/casino industry). I don't regret that, but I do wonder where my life would have gone had I figured out some way of going to culinary school. I doubt that that man would have traveled as far as I have. Perhaps, but I doubt it.
For years though, I didn't spend much time worrying about the making of food. I spent more time delving into takeaway and dining at work in the employee dining room (a endeavor not for the faint at heart). I occasionally made meals, but because I wasn't doing it consistently, my skills remained rusty. I did not tend to learn new skills.
Over time, I've taken to spending more time in the kitchen. It started when I traveled to Japan to be with my wife. As she worked and I didn't, I made a point of doing the shopping and preparing the meals. When we moved back to the States, I declared the kitchen as my domain. I didn't cook all of the time. I didn't cook a lot at all, but from time to time I would whip up some meal or another and it would be good. It wouldn't be fabulous -- again, the skills stayed static and I hadn't begun to think about how the food was cooking or how the flavors came together. I was relying mostly on native talent.
Since I've lived in Australia, my enjoyment from cooking has increased. (I think that a large part of that is because I live in a foreign land where the foods that I'm used to getting in prepackaged form are harder to find. American style biscuits for example, sometthing that I've been able to simply buy in a tube. We don't have the tube here. Instead, I've had to learn to make my own.) I can safely say that I have something of a love for the craft. My interests in the matter have increased and I'm actually learning from it. I like that. I like the fact that I'm doing new things, that I'm looking at recipes as guidelines rather than definitive instructions because I know more of what I'm doing. I have a better idea of what the different cuts of meat are and how they should be cooked as well the better ways of cooking them. I know more about heat than I used to know. I know how different heats cook things differently.
As an example, I can now cook beef stroganoff competently.
I would feel safe to say that my mother's beef stroganoff was my favorite dish when I was growing up. About eight years ago, I finally convinced her to give me her recipe. The first few times I made it, it turned out pretty good. It was never right, but it was pretty good. I do remember once, however, when my wife (then girlfriend) and I hosted another couple for dinner, that it nearly inedible. The beef was tough and chewy and the sauce was runny to the point of being almost liquid.
A few weeks ago, I tried it again. I'd learned about the concept of braising, something that had eluded me before. Braising, for those of you who don't know, is a technique in which you slowly cook meat or vegetables in a small amount of liquid over a low heat. One of the key things to this is that the meat be of a tougher cut, one with a bit of fat and gristle in it. The slow cooking process actually renders those more unappealing bits into a thickening gravy that gives a deeper, richer flavor to the food. On top of that, the meat becomes extraordinarily tender. Braising is the technique used when making osso bucco or pot roast.
Part of the problem I'd had in the past was that I tended to buy the more tender cuts like sirloin rather than a tougher cut like skirt. The sirloin was too chewy. This time I bought what they call braising steak at the butchers. It cooked up beautifully and after an hour or so, it was almost flaky.
Another thing that made a difference is that I made my own noodles. I'd learned how to make pasta recently and have been practicing that from time to time. It's really easy once you get the hang of it. Practice does help, though. Since the pasta I was making was essentially noodles made with egg and the recipe that my mother imparted on me required egg noodles, I figured that they would work fine. They did. I'd like to figure out how to make them more curly, but I suppose I will learn.
When I sat down to eat and I took the first bite, I realized that I'd finally figured out how to make a good beef stroganoff.
Labels: cooking, food
